Chapter 42 Section 6

This open space is less than a block away from the school gate. It is a disorganized and abandoned place, divided into upper and lower floors.There are piles of big rocks, ruined walls, overgrown grass, garbage that has been exposed to the sun and rain, and brown plastic bags thrown by residents of nearby buildings.Small children often come here to fight stone fights, and older children often come here to roast sweet potatoes despite the chill of the evening.A kid named Weird ate a locust raw, and its slime ran down his jaw.That act became a legend that circulated in many circles.However, several grown-ups witnessed the move, and their accounts appear reliable.Here, other terrible things happened.A man sleeps in the gutter every night.Late one night in the summer some guys from another pool room--the Major's--took a girl in the rubble and lined up to gang rape her.Who is that girl?Will she?Stories like these abound.

This open space is called a vegetable field, just like a back alley is called a yard.It was here that Matt broke his hand while playing a poker game called Knuckles. Matt came in, went into his mother's bedroom, saw her beading, and reached out to touch her face. "what is this?" "What does it look like?" he asked. "Blood." "Then it's blood." "Then you should clean it up." "You don't want to know what happened?" "whats the matter?" "Nothing," he said. Sitting in the living room, looking at the prints and scratches on his hands, the streaks formed by blood coagulation, he couldn't help feeling a kind of self-pity, even an interest, a sense of animal attachment, almost stretching Tongue out to lick.Just then his brother walked in, arriving home earlier than usual, and Matt hid his hands.

"what is that?" "nothing." "Let me see, you rascal." "I need to clean up." "You should smear iodine. Let me see." "I don't need iodine," Matt said, with some stubbornness in his tone. Matt held out his hand while looking away, as if as a ploy. "Got to get him some iodine," Nick said to his mother. "Is this the guy who carries the Seven-Up soda?" "Iodine-wine, iodine-wine." Matt huddled in a chair as his brother examined his injured hand.Nick's hands were dirty and bruised, much older than Matt's, five or six years older, almost grown-up hands.There were blood blisters on the palms and scratches from glass.

"What happened? You slapped the little girl on the mouth?" "Injured playing poker in the vegetable field." "You went to the vegetable field?" "On the side." "Does she know that you are going to the vegetable field?" "I didn't go in." "Do you think it's right to go there?" "What do you think?" "I think you can go. But you have to be careful. There are kids from all over there, and they don't know you're my brother." Nick took Matt's hand and watched carefully. "It doesn't hurt as much now."

"You play knuckles." "right." "As a result, you didn't run out of cards, how many times did the winner hit you?" "I can choose." "I remember that choice." "Either he took the edge of a deck of cards and scratched it nine times on my hand, or he scratched it four times and then slammed it once with a deck of cards." "Hold the card, hit it hard against your knuckles." "That's what it is," Matt said. "Let me ask you. How can you lose a game of poker with a bunch of kids with such a good brain?"

"They're big," Matt said. Nick takes Matt's hand.Over the years, Nick had often tapped him on the head—a brisk flick of his middle finger, on the head.Nick lifted him out of the chair several times and then put him down.At one point, Nick saw Matt wiping his nose on the doorjamb and hugged him, pretending to throw him out of the window.Encountering Matt blocking the way at the door, Nick often kicked his ass. "I think we're talking about some iodine." "I don't need iodine," he whispered. Matt watched Nick grab his hand.His brother smelled of work sweat, heat, and pungent chorizo.He ate heavily seasoned, grated chorizo ​​at work.

Mother came in and looked at Matt's hands. She said, "Red Potion." Nick moved Matt's hand away. "Iodine," he said. "First, you should wash your hands with soap and cold water. Matthew, do you hear? Then, dry them." "Then, apply iodine." "I don't need iodine," Matt said. "I'll rub red potion." "Iodine, the medicine is stronger, the effect is better, the stimulation is greater, and it kills bacteria." "Red Potion," Matt said. "The tincture of iodine soaks into the skin, cleans the wound, and kills the germs."

"Red Potion," Matt said. However, he didn't want his brother to let go of his injured hand, so don't let go at this time. Clara stood on the roof.The storm clouds gathered in the sky, forming a clear edge of blue, like the weather on some distant coast.The sky is rich in color, the clouds are turning, and it will not disappear. Clara's children were playing with a neighbor's child on a nearby blanket. Clara took off the drying clothes and put them in the hamper, but wasn't ready to go indoors just yet.The wind was blowing harder, and she saw a whole neighborhood of women busy on the rooftops, unloading laundry from dangling lines, ducking their heads every now and then to escape the frantic flapping of the sheets.She heard other women tugging on the ropes that criss-crossed alleys, windows, and clothes poles, the screeching sound of old ropes rubbing against rusty wheels.

Clara misses Albert's mother.Whenever she entered the front room, she had a strange feeling.It was empty and made her feel uncomfortable.There was an empty bed there, and now even that bed is gone, leaving only space to be filled. Another odd thing was that they didn't want to get rid of the bed, neither of them.They left the bed in the room for a few weeks, facing the angle of the sun the way Albert's mother liked it.During the hours when the sun was streaming into the room, she liked to close her eyes and enjoy the sun on her face. Her pajamas and hair are white, as are the sheets.Sheets billowed across the roof as women grabbed them and folded them for easy packing.

The first raindrops were big and splashed on the roof. Not long ago, she had been on the roof, more or less to get away from her daily life.She saw the young man standing across the street, smoking a cigarette near a street lamp. Most of the time she thought about him, it was his movements that came to her mind.She thought of his bruised palms touching her body, his nails full of dust.She thought of him turning his shoulders, his gaze gazing at her lovingly beyond his clenched fist. She liked seeing him standing under the streetlight looking at the apartment complex.Later, after thinking about it for a while, she felt that she didn't like it that much.However, that was the only time she saw him there.

The heavy rain was getting closer, but the two children were reluctant to enter the house. From certain angles, he appears relaxed, natural, neither alien nor entirely unknown.She thought at first that maybe it would be nice to see him as a young man, like a character in a bildungsroman.However, only his movements came to her mind.He didn't tell his name, but it's not a fictional character.He was a whirling blur hovering somewhere over her right shoulder, something her brain had compressed from all that pleasure and wet contact. She looked across the patio and saw three girls across the street playing scratch on the doorstep.They were sitting on different steps, and the girl who was playing the game was bent over, her body was motionless, and one hand was busy catching the scattered seeds.Clara could hear them yelling game jargon to interfere with each other.There was a quarrel between them, with high-pitched voices and clear words. What she needs is not more, but less.This was something her husband couldn't understand.Aloneness, distance, time, work.She needs something in order to let herself breathe. She lifted the laundry basket to the door and put it by the door.At this time, the nearby roofs were almost deserted, and the shouting in the alley had stopped.Even standing at the height of the roof, she could hear the knocking.A woman tapped a coin on a window to signal children who were still playing outside to come in. At this time, it was raining cats and dogs.Clara picked up her daughter, slung the basket under one arm, reached out to grab another child's hand, and ran across the roof laughing in the rain. At dinner, she told him that she had acted selfishly. "I don't think that's true," he said. He tore a crusty loaf into two small pieces.This is his customary practice, deeply rooted, with clear rhythm and proper intervals in the movements of his hands.She couldn't imagine how he could finish a meal without this vital ritual. "The studio is a waste. I'm not getting anywhere. We should put Teresa in that room." "Take your time," he said. "Anyway, do you have any specific goals? For the satisfaction that creating every day brings you, and to pass the time, keep painting." She had a small engraving of Whistler, the famous mother, hanging in a corner of the spare room.She felt that most people would not look at this painting, and she liked the balanced form and soft true colors of the picture.The works are full of tension, and there are many characteristics of modernism.The woman sat there, wearing a turban and a loose black blouse.The painter seems to have taken the figure out of her time and expressed it in a 20th-century abstract way long before she was ready for it.However, Clara also likes to examine the profound connotations of this work through color combinations, advanced color theory, and perhaps painting theory itself, to appreciate this mother, to appreciate this woman, to understand the life of this mother, Get her anecdotes.The woman sits in a chair and meditates, with a stiff expression and stiff movements, like a Quaker. Her thoughts seem to drift far away, which directly arouses the interest of the viewer.The reason, Clara thinks, is simply that the characters in the painting are lost in memory, in a trance formed by memory.In spite of being influenced by the painter, son, and theoretical focus, the author shows a strong elegiac flavor on the screen. "No, the room should be used. That's what I'm supposed to do. Give the place something to live in." "We have the front room, let's use it," he said. "We have the front rooms, and it's still like some kind of no-man's land. I'll use the front rooms first, and then think about the spare rooms." "I will hurry up and become the dean of the science department. I will achieve my goal. This summer, we will travel, to Spain or Italy, to the place you want to see." He said. She liked to watch him eat: he handled the dishes with great care, savored the food, chewed slowly.He raised his glass, stopped an inch from his lips, and savored the wine slowly, as if understanding the land, the connection between man and land.His movements are natural, without any pretentiousness.This is what Albert looks like when faced with a plate of black squid.He looked at the dishes on his plate, thought of the land and the sea, and sucked it all into him before he picked up the fork. "Go to Spain," she said, "go to Madrid and buy Prada." She laughed, a little grimly.That hollow tone was what she used to punish herself. "I want to admire paintings until I'm too tired to lie down." One day she saw him on the street, with a friend, heading for a store that sold Army and Navy supplies.She stopped and stood there, blocking the way of the two of them.He almost bumped into her arms, and only later did he see who the person in front of him was.He stopped, only slightly surprised, and his friend stopped too.At this moment, she walked around them and walked across the street. The next day, as she looked out the window, he was standing by the lamppost.She was installing new curtains in the front room.He stood there smoking a cigarette.A Rail Express van passed between them and he looked up, saw her, flicked his cigarette briskly, and walked across the street. She threw the mattress on the floor.Nick looked at her, took off his shirt over his head, and looked at her again.She stood there with her head down, as if trying to remember something.Later, she undid a button on the side of the skirt. Unlike the last time, she kissed briefly, which made Nick feel a little strange-the last time they kissed, they almost forgot the time.Kissing, he thought, could arouse passion and tenderness in her.However, she stopped abruptly, cast her eyes to one side, her expression was dull, thoughtful, it could be said that she seemed to be hurt, compared with the last time he remembered, she was a completely different person.Perhaps, her face was even more pale, weak and light.Her white limbs swung before his eyes, her eyes bulging as if seeing something he could not know. He looked at her expression, unable to understand what it meant. There was another smile, the one she gave privately when they embraced.Maybe, she's laughing at something else, maybe she's laughing at herself, as if it's been three days since: In an Atlantic and Pacific Foods store, she's walking in a shopping area, thinking about what the two of them did .In fact, it wasn't the scene of three days later, the matter was not over yet, it was in progress - she held his testicles in her hand and squeezed them gently. Naked women are astonishing. He had never experienced a situation like this: a naked woman standing in front of him, everything was exposed, with no half-covered clothes on her upper body, and no beach blanket on her legs, which was very different from what he saw during sex in a dark car.Sometimes she stands, sometimes she lies down, front and back, without concealment, the whole body is unobstructed.There was a change in her image as she moved about the room, and the way she walked toward him was more confident than his, with a light gait and a free movement, with parts of her body that didn't jerk.She knew a lot about nudity, she seemed to have grown up naked in this room, maybe she was thin when she was young, thin from a certain angle, with a slightly protruding belly and not too happy with her legs.Now, she has the right proportions and is no longer shy.Of course, she is someone who has experienced it and is used to being watched.She doesn't have attractive curves, but she looks lovely when naked, and clings to his body when making out, like a huge thin moth, rushing towards the light recklessly. He picked up her stockings from the floor and put them on his head.She smiled, looked away, seemed about to say something, then changed her mind.He pulled the socks off, and he could see her through the heels to a certain extent.He made a motion of drawing a gun from the holster under his shoulder, and pointed at her. "Hand over everything, if you don't give it to me, it's over." "Looking at you like this, it's hard to think you're serious." "Hey ma'am. That's what they do." "You mean robbery at gunpoint?" "Yeah. But, I gotta say, they're going to be crazy about money for putting things like that on their faces." "Well, it's worn. They don't wear worn socks over their faces, do they?" "I think those guys are not overly picky people, they just put on the right thing when they see it." "I must say, you have changed." "If you came into the house and I had this on my face, do you think you'd recognize me?" "I don't recognize it. But I wouldn't recognize it without the mask." He took off his mask and sat on the mattress.She went out to pour water, and he looked at her back, at her slightly trembling buttocks.He wrapped the stocking around the cock, then tossed it aside. His face was left with the warmth of the stockings and the tinge of weariness, the lingering smell of nylon, the bad smell of a day's wear.It was her scent, which gave him intimacy.There was something about her that he knew that lessened the strangeness of her to him. However, she is still a stranger, and it makes him feel strange that you don't want to tell your friends about your relationship with her.You don't want to admit that your relationship with her is real.It just happened, happened suddenly, that's all.On the wall of the room was Whistler's painting of the mother-asshole. He watched her enter the room. He said: "Listen, when my brother was a kid, somewhere he saw a little girl pee. She was probably the kid next door. She took off her panties, wriggled, and sat on the toilet to pee. My brother watched , and out of the toilet, into a room full of grown-ups. As I heard later, he waited for them to stop talking. Then, at last, they stopped talking and looked at him. My brother said, Mary Philly didn't Little sparrow." She handed him the water.If you don't count the jokes he sometimes tells, it's one of Nick's biggest utterances.Later, she reached out and grabbed the trousers he had left on the floor, looking in the pockets for cigarettes. The two sat on the mattress with their knees together, smoking and drinking water. "Do you know why I smoke old gold brand cigarettes? I don't let people know about it casually." "Nonsense, why?" she asked. "This brand of cigarettes used to sponsor the Dodgers on the radio. Old Gold. We're men who smoke, not men who take pills. The Dodgers are my team. Used to be, not anymore." "I'm flattered that you told me this secret." "Yes. You have to tell me one of your secrets, big or small." "What's your name?" "Nick." "Nick, you can't come here anymore. This is crazy. Don't do it again, okay? We did it, now it's over." "We can do it somewhere else," he said. "Not another place. No, I don't think so." Not to mention the body.He had never seen a woman's face this close before.He felt that by looking at her face, he knew what she was doing and what she was eating.From the way she smiled when she looked away, from her uncombed hair, hanging over her right eye, he knew how she slept, how her face expressed her emotions, that indescribable emotion. "Nick Xie," he said, with a sting in his tone, a vengeful intent.She must have known about the chess lessons, must have noticed Matt's last name, knew that Nick was Matt's brother, must have felt the imminent danger of the affair. However, she seemed completely unconcerned, similar to the nonchalant air he displayed when he knew she was the wife of an acquaintance.She didn't care whose brother he was at all. "Then I'd better not come," he said. "Yes, I think it should be." He grabbed his trousers and dressed them, ignoring her.She was completely naked, sitting on the mattress, with her body slanted, her legs together, slightly bent, waving the hand holding the cigarette, fanning away the smoke in front of her.It didn't even occur to him to look back.